Every month, our contributors will be putting together lists of ten films on certain topics. Each month will be different and will feature an alphabetical list our selections, commentary from each of us on our picks, and an itemized list showing what we each selected.
This month, we took a good look at the list of films we hadn’t seen and chose our top ten. These films have personal, cultural or historical significances that demands viewing, but we just haven’t gotten around to them yet. There’s an eclectic mix here and I’m sure each of us have at least one film on our list that one of the other contributors has already seen.
Normally, our lists have some overlap, but surprisingly that did not occur this month. There are forty films listed and each appears on only one list, which gives you a lot of extra reading to do and us a lot of movies to catch up on. There are three directors that appear on the list multiple times: Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Ingmar Bergman each have two citations.
I’ve challenged my contributors to dedicating the next year to trying to catch each of the ten films on their lists, though, in some cases that won’t be possible.
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
(dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder) Commentary By Tripp Burton – This entry is standing in for the entire filmmaking career of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose entire career is a blindspot for me. Fassbinder is one of the more prolific directors of the second half of the 20th Century and one that I feel you need to see if you [are into great filmmaking].
All Quiet on the Western Front
(dir. Lewis Milestone) Commentary By Thomas LaTourrette – I hear people describe this as the first great Best Picture winner. I have read the book and have been interested in seeing the film, but have just never gotten around to it. Having the three other contributors list it as one of the top Best Picture winners has made me wonder what I have been missing out on.
Apocalypse Now
(dir. Francis Ford Coppola) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – One of the seminal war films ever made, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now is the last film of Coppola’s impressive 1970s period. Of all of his films, this is the most acclaimed that I have yet to see. I have had this on my Must Watch list for several years and just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Apt Pupil
(dir. Bryan Singer) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – This might seem like a strange choice for the list since there are so many classic features I have yet to watch. However, Bryan Singer has been a consistently appealing director and with a starring performance by an acclaimed Ian McKellen, I felt I should at least consider going for something a bit different from the rest.
The Assault
(dir. Fons Rademakers) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – I keep waiting for this 1986 Dutch film, the winner of both the Golden Globe and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of its year, to be released on DVD or Blu-ray, but it remains among the missing. A cut and allegedly badly dubbed version was released on VHS in 1987, but that was it. The film, which is about an atrocity committed in the Netherlands toward the end of World War II that affects the son of the victims throughout his life, was shown at the Toronto Film Festival in September 1986 and opened in New York in the Spring of 1987. It received rapturous reviews and was on several ten best lists at the time.
The Baker’s Wife
(dir. Marcel Pagnol) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – I have long had an appreciation of this story of the newlywed middle-aged baker whose heart is broken when his young wife leaves him for a younger man [is the basis for] the 1976 Stephen Schwartz musical adaptation. The classic 1938 French film, directed by the great Marcel Pagnol, won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Film of 1940, the year it was released in the U.S. It has never been available on home video in the U.S. It is available in a Spanish import in French with Spanish and Portuguese subtitles, but not English. Like Pagnol’s now out-of-print Fanny trilogy, this needs a serious DVD and Blu-ray restoration.
Carnival in Flanders
(dir. Jacques Feyder) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – This 1936 historical French comedy won the Best Foreign Film award of both the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics. Released on VHS in 1996, there has never been a U.S. DVD release of Jacques Feyder’s satire about the women of a French town who entertain the invading Spaniards in order for the town to be ruled exempt from proposed taxes. I would think there is enough interest out there for a DVD and Blu-ray upgrade of the old VHS version by now.
Chinatown
(dir. Roman Polanski) Commentary By Thomas LaTourrette – This is another film where I was too young to see it when it came out. Later on, my growing antipathy to Jack Nicholson’s hammy performances kept me from seeking it out, though I gather he is better in this. Since I often like the film noir genre and a growing list of people keep recommending it, I guess I will need to plan on seeing it.
The Color of Paradise
(dir. Majid Majidi) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – This acclaimed 1999 Iranian film earned a rare standing ovation at the 1999 New York Film Festival, opening in the U.S. in March 2000 to rapturous reviews. The story of a highly resourceful 8-year-old blind boy seen by his father as embarrassment and shuffled off to distant relatives is said to be one of the most moving films ever made. It was one of the first Iranian films to receive international recognition. I may be a few years late, but hopefully I’ll get around to it before it completely eludes me.
Deliverance
(dir. John Boorman) Commentary By Tripp Burton – To be honest, I’m not exactly sure why Deliverance is on this list. Certainly there are a lot of more highly regarded films I left off, but Deliverance is a combination of critical success and cultural landmark that I can’t quite call myself a film buff without being able to reference it.
La Dolce Vita and most other Federico Fellini films
(dir. Federico Fellini) Commentary By Thomas LaTourrette – Fellini’s later films that were released when I could have seen them in theaters sounded pretentious and off-putting and so I never saw those. Actually the only Fellini film that I have seen is La Strada. It was a beautiful, striking and disturbing film, anchored by a stunning performance by his wife, Giulietta Masina. However, I saw a re-release of it at a depressing time of my life when my first partner was dying and that may have put me off seeing more. One hears about how influential he has been as a director and it does make me curious about him. Having wandered the streets of Rome makes me want to see La Dolce Vita, though Nights of Cabiria (which became the musical Sweet Charity), Amarcord, 8 ½ (which became the musical Nine) and Juliet of the Spirits are also high on the list to see someday.
Eboli
(dir. Francesco Rosi) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – This 1979 Italian film from Carlo Levi’s acclaimed autobiographical novel, AKA Christ Stopped at Eboli, is about an anti-fascist writer who is exiled in 1935 fascist Italy to a remote region south of Eboli, the last outpost of civilization. He finds himself in an area that has changed very little since the Middle Ages, an area of abject despair where even God is said not to dare go. Considered director Francesco Rosi’s masterpiece, the film was among the National Board of Review’s list of Best Foreign Language Films of 1980 and later won a BAFTA Award in that category when the film was released in the U.K.
Eraserhead
(dir. David Lynch) Commentary By Tripp Burton – I love the films of David Lynch, and Eraserhead is one of his seminal films, but the truth is I have never mustered up enough energy to slog through the dark nightmare of a film. One of these days I will put it in the DVD player, but I’ll have to really rev myself up.
Fanny and Alexander
(dir. Ingmar Bergman) Commentary By Tripp Burton – I think the three-plus-hour running time is what has always kept me away from Fanny and Alexander, Ingmar Bergman’s late masterpiece of a family epic. It has always felt like homework more than pleasure, although like most Bergman, I’m sure when I finally sit down in front of it I will find a lot more pleasure than I expected.
The Godfather trilogy
(dir. Francis Ford Coppola) Commentary By Thomas LaTourrette – I was too young when The Godfather first opened to see it in a theater, the same with the first sequel. Perhaps it is a lack of interest in the mafia that has kept me from seeing it. When I was older, I was a bit disillusioned with Marlon Brando as an actor and so I never made an effort to see it. With their large casts of notable performers, I am more intrigued to see them now. I hear people describe the first two films as perhaps two of the greatest films of all time of the American cinema, and these are probably the films that I am most embarrassed to say that I have not seen.
Kiss of the Spider Woman
(dir. Hector Babenco) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – When I picked my ten films, I looked through four sets of lists to choose a handful of each. I pulled from the AFI list of 100 Years…100 Films, I pulled from the list of top 50 box office winners (both adjusted and non-adjusted), I looked at directors whose work I hadn’t fully viewed, and I looked at Best Picture nominees. Strangely, of all the Best Picture nominees I could have chosen, Kiss of the Spider Woman was one of a select few. What made the decision for me was the fact that William Hurt became the first actor in Oscar history to win for playing a homosexual character. That makes this a significant film in gay cinema history.
Letty Lynton
(dir. Clarence Brown) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – This legendary film enters the public domain in 2025 at which time it may finally be seen for the first time since 1936 when a court decision sided with the plaintiffs in their plagiarism suit that the film too closely followed a 1930 play and awarded them a percentage of the profits. MGM appealed all the way to the Supreme Court to no avail. Based on the same real-life source material as David Lean’s 1950 film, Madeline, it stars Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Nils Asther, Lewis Stone, May Robson and Louise Closser Hale and was a big box-office hit at the time of its initial release.
Make Way for Tomorrow
(dir. Leo McCarey) Commentary By Thomas LaTourrette – When all three of the other contributors listed this in the top ten lists for family films and one even had it in his list for cinematic influences, it made me realize that this was a film that I really needed to see. It had not been on my radar until then. This early film about aging sounds very touching. I have heard that Leo McCarey said he won the Oscar for the wrong film when he won for The Awful Truth and was not even nominated for this one. It is now viewed as his masterpiece and one that I do want to see.
Mean Streets
(dir. Martin Scorsese) Commentary By Tripp Burton – I have never hidden my lack of enthusiasm for Martin Scorsese, and I find a lot of his “masterpieces” highly overrated and flawed. Something about his breakthrough Mean Streets appeals to me, though, and the film has a firm enough place in film history that one of these days I should sacrifice the two hours to see if maybe there is something I am missing in my appreciation of Scorsese.
Metropolis
(dir. Fritz Lang) Commentary By Tripp Burton – Confession: I have owned a DVD of Metropolis for close to 20 years and still haven’t found the time to put it in and watch it (I’m sure there are better quality copies out there now too). I don’t know why that is, as the silent science fiction classic seems right up my alley and is cited as the inspiration to a lot of films I love.
Morning Glory
(dir. Roger Mitchell) Commentary By Thomas LaTourrette – I am a huge fan of Katharine Hepburn, and she is my all time favorite actress. Two of her films (The Philadelphia Story and The Lion in Winter) are on my top ten list. So it seems quite surprising that I have yet to see the film that won her the first of her four Oscars. A quick search has shown that a nearby library system even has a copy of it, so I am not certain why I have yet to see it. I probably worry that it will be a letdown and that she might prove stilted in it or even unworthy of winning. I probably should not worry as that same year she was a strong Jo in Little Women and two years later she was stunning in Alice Adams. So chances are she will be great in this too.
The Passion of Joan of Arc
(dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer) Commentary By Tripp Burton – In my last two moves I have had to change cable boxes and lost a copy of The Passion of Joan of Arc on my DVR. Why do I keep recording and then deleting the film without watching it? Maybe it is the emotional investment I know I will need to make, but I also know how rewarding it will be when I finally get to it.
Pi
(dir. Darren Aronofsky) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – This film falls into the category of films by directors I like that I haven’t seen. Darren Aronofsky’s first film remains the only film of his small filmography that I haven’t watched. This sci-fi drama earned a lot of praise and kick started a career that has been both compelling and frustrating, but never dull. I’d like to see where it all started.
Il Posto
(dir. Ermanno Olmi) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – This award-winning 1961 film tells the story of a young man from a small town who goes to work in a large faceless company where he must sit around and wait for an older employee to die before he can even be promoted to a clerk. I’m sure there’s much more to it than that, but that’s its description on IMDb where it enjoys a rating of 8.1/10. It’s directed by Ermanno Olmi who seventeen years later gave us the still potent The Tree of the Wooden Clogs so I’m sure it has hidden pleasures not even hinted at in that simple description.
Rashomon and most other Akira Kurosawa films
(dir. Akira Kurosawa) Commentary By Thomas LaTourrette – Ran is the only Kurosawa film that I have seen. This King Lear adaptation may have been epic in scale, but I found I did not care so much about the people. As time has passed, I have been more interested in trying some of his more personal films like Rashomon with the differing tales by the characters, Yojimbo, and even Seven Samurai.
Salesman
(dir. Albert & David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin) Commentary By Tripp Burton – As the columnist on this site writing about documentaries it is a little embarrassing to confess I haven’t seen Salesman. But it is more embarrassing to confess that it is standing in for an entire wave of films, the plotless cinema verité style documentaries of the 1960s and 1970s. Maybe you will see one or two of them in “Eyeing the Truth” in the next few months as I try to remedy this.
The Seventh Seal and most other Ingmar Bergman films
(dir. Ingmar Bergman) Commentary By Thomas LaTourrette – I have seen the famous still of the knight playing chess with death, but have never seen the film. This was the film that made him a household name, though Smiles of a Summer Night from two years previous was turned into the charming Stephen Sondheim musical A Little Night Music. I did see Fanny and Alexander when it was released and the first half was captivating, the second so depressing that it may have put me off his films. I guess I was worried that they would all be so dour, but will need to try at some point. There are also Autumn Sonata, Face to Face, Cries & Whispers, Through a Glass Darkly and Wild Strawberries among many others to see.
The Sixth Sense
(dir. M. Night Shyamalan) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – When this film came out, it was a huge hit. Everyone was talking about the twist, but were thankfully tight-lipped on what it was. Of course, this was before the internet became the spoiler haven it is. At that year’s OFTA awards, as I was tabulating nominations for our category for Most Cinematic Moment, I read a one-line description of the scene at the end of the film that gave away the secret. I was frustrated and angry and the film never sounded that interesting afterwards. I really need to go back and give it a watch since it is said to be one of the few M. Night Shyamalan films worth anything.
Sorrell and Son
(dir. Herbert Brenon) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – I read the novel and finally came across the excellent 1984 mini-series (1987 in the U.S.) last year, but I still haven’t seen this 1927/28 Oscar nominee for Best Direction. Long thought lost, AMPAS has an archival copy allegedly in very poor condition with the last reel missing that will probably never be made available for commercial release. Here’s hoping that it is, or better still, that someone finds a more pristine copy hidden in somebody’s attic. H.B. Warner, the same year he played Christ in The King of Kings for DeMille, starred as the hapless hero with Nils Asther as his son and Anna Q. Nilsson as his runaway wife.
Sounder
(dir. Martin Ritt) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield gave acclaimed performances in Martin Ritt’s sharecropper drama Sounder, one of five films nominated for Best Picture in 1972. It was a year considered one of the finest slates in Oscar history. Having seen the other four films on the list (The Godfather, Cabaret, Deliverance and The Emigrants), I felt seeing the final selection would be a terrific choice.
Spartacus
(dir. Stanley Kubrick) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – Stanley Kubrick is hands down my all-time favorite director. Apart from my uninspired feelings towards Lolita and Barry Lyndon, the rest of his filmography is sheer brilliance. Of his small slate of films, there are only two I have never seen. Fear and Desire and Spartacus. Frequently cited as one of history’s great films, Spartacus was the film that led Kubrick do depart the studio system and embark on an impressive string of great films where his complete artistic control was paramount to his success. It’s time I put this one behind me.
Spellbound
(dir. Alfred Hitchcock) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – I’ve seen most of Alfred Hitchcock’s most acclaimed films, but there are still several blindspots. Of these, Spellbound seems to be the one with the greatest level of acclaim, which is why it’s included on this list rather than films like To Catch a Thief or Marnie, films I should also tackle eventually.
Sunrise
(dir. F.W. Murnau) Commentary By Thomas LaTourrette – This has been of interest to me ever since I saw Visions of Light, a documentary about cinematography. The shots from Sunrise were unlike anything I have ever seen in a film. I have a degree in photography and the stills I have seen remind me of the dreamy film that I used to shoot with. For the cinematography alone, it is a film I would like to see. Also, seeing one of Janet Gaynor’s Academy Award-winning performances is another reason. And this is all before Wesley mentioned it as one of the top ten films that turned him into a cinephile.
Taxi Driver
(dir. Martin Scorsese) Commentary By Thomas LaTourrette – I was too young to see many of the R-rated films of the 1970s when they were released, and those remain a weak point in the list of films that I have seen. There are many to choose from, but I settled on this one as it seems to have the largest cult following. Having never seen it, I have heard the phrase “You talking to me?” many times over. I have gotten a bit blasé over Robert de Niro as an actor as some of his later work has been underwhelming, so it would be interesting to see him when he was young and vital. I am also intrigued to see a very young Jodie Foster. Martin Scorsese has never been one of my favorite directors, I confess that Mean Streets and Raging Bull also could be on this list too, so I would like to see one of his masterpieces and see if it holds up.
The Ten Commandments
(dir. Cecil B. DeMille) Commentary By Tripp Burton – There are a lot of other films I could put on this list, but this is the film I get most razzed about (mostly from my wife every Easter season when it comes on TV and I mention I’ve never seen it). One of these years I will sit down with my family and watch the entire film, but it is a time commitment the crazy holiday season makes more difficult to make every year.
A Time for Drunken Horses
(dir. Bahman Ghobadi) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – This acclaimed Iranian film has been on my must-see list since 2000 when it was an early favorite for year-end awards for Best Foreign Language Film, losing in almost every race to Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It did won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival “for its compassionate but vigorous depiction of a harsh reality where horses and humans share the same predicament.” It’s about a family of five Kurds on the Iran-Iraq border, the oldest of which is a boy of twelve, who risk everything for their youngest member in need of a life-saving operation which he may or may not get.
The Turning Point
(dir. Herbert Ross) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – Before The Color Purple tied its eleven Oscar nominations without a win, The Turning Point was Oscar’s all-time biggest loser. With a cast headed by Oscar winners Anne Bancroft, Shirley MacLaine (both nominated for this film), this ballet drama doesn’t have the best of reputation, but the historical nature of its lack of Oscar haul makes it one I’m very curious to watch.
The Way of All Flesh
(dir. Victor Fleming) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – Emil Jannings won the first Best Actor Oscar for two films in 1927/28, Josef von Sternberg’s well-regarded The Lost Patrol and this lost film, a Victor Fleming-directed tearjerker about a banker who accidentally kills a thief who is misidentified as him and goes into hiding for twenty years, unable to face his family. Belle Bennett and Philippe de Lacy co-star. It was remade in 1940 with Akim Tamiroff, Gladys George and William Henry, but that version, though not lost, hasn’t been seen in decades. The original may never be found, but why won’t Universal, which now owns the old Paramount catalog, at least release the remake?
When Harry Met Sally
(dir. Rob Reiner) Commentary By Tripp Burton – I love romantic comedies, and New York romantic comedies in particular, so it is sad that I have seen all of the copy cats of When Harry Met Sally but never the original. I know the main talking points of the film, but I will probably understand a lot more about the modern romantic comedy if I go back to one of the benchmarks of the genre.
Wuthering Heights
(dir. William Wyler) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – There are several years that are cited as among the best for Hollywood output, 1939 is often at the top or near the top of that list. With the likes of Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz and Stagecoach as the top three, that alone should be enough to earn it the appellation, but there were several other films released that year that are considered classics. Among them is Wuthering Heights, a Best Picture nominee for 1939 that also appears on the AFI 100 Years…100 Films list, which means it hits two of my selection criteria, which is more than enough for me to add it to the list.
Wesley’s List |
Peter’s List |
Tripp’s List |
Thomas’ List |
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